Ergative from passive in Proto-Basque
This paper is an abbreviated version, in English,
of Martínez-Areta (2016), in which I argue that the ergative alignment of
historical Basque came about as a result of an active reanalysis of
passive predicates in Proto-Basque. This view has been previously
defended by Trask (1977),
who drew on the template of finite verbs. Since the first slot of
intransitives (representing S) and of transitives (representing P)
are identical, P must have been also a clause-level S at a previous
stage prior to an active reanalysis of passive clauses. I attempt to
solve some problems of Trask’s proposal, and suggest that some finite verbs of the past/irrealis beginning with A actually come from active clauses.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Verbal morphology of Basque
- 3.History of the research on the Basque finite verb
- 4.The present
- 5.The past and the irrealis
- 6.Split ergativity in Basque
- 7.Several additional features that the ergative from passive
hypothesis can explain
- 8.Conclusions
-
Acknowledgements
-
Notes
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Abbreviations
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References